887

Canadian art star Robert LePage’s justly hyped show about memory and his childhood might be a solo one, but he rarely feels alone on stage. He stands next to a kind of tricked-out doll’s house that represents the cramped, mundane Quebec apartment block he grew up in, and makes its inhabitants real through a dazzling set of devices – projection, shadow play, and tiny puppets moving in tiny rooms.

It’s all inspired by the idea of a ‘memory palace’ – an ancient device used to remember. But LePage’s thoughts swell and burst out of its fragile walls. He explores how Quebec’s struggle for independence divided his family, remembering a time where nationalist militia wearing maple leaf masks roamed its streets, and took over its airwaves. He subtly marks out all the places where poverty and lack of opportunity stifled the lives of his pent-up neighbours. And most of all, he shows how his environment soaked into him and defined him – like a gravy-drenched chip in a dish of Quebecois poutine.

‘887’ shows that memory is a sixth sense – a richly emotional art, not a dry exercise of mental ability. And accordingly, sometimes LePage gets swept away in his own magical showmanship, revelling in his status as master of a pint-sized universe. But he deliberately undermines himself by inflating his own hubris to ridiculous levels. There’s a toe-curlingly tactless scene where he steamrollers through a reunion with an old drama school friend, now a recovering alcoholic. He sends up the effortless verbal fluency that powers this show, too, in a series of deranged answerphone messages left for this same long-suffering buddy.

After two hours in LePage’s company, I felt like I knew almost as much about his early years as I did about my own. But unlike most one-sided conversations, it left me feeling enriched, not drained – mesmerised by the richness he brings to a very ordinary childhood.